In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
